Chapter Text
Tell me oh Muse, of a man, a complicated man, the captain of a journey that took many twists and turns - who -- oh.
You mean multiple. Journeys.
Of a -
And he's not the captain?
And it starts when he isn't even a man yet?
Alright.
I didn't specify when to start, did I.
As you wish, oh Muse.
The first time, Odysseus was fairly young.
Below ten years of age, and the man had been very nice, giving him a piece of itria, the sesame brittle crunching deliciously crisp and sweet between his teeth, and promising lots more in his ship.
The cage had been padded at the bottom, and smelled of lamb, which Odysseus had liked; and it was the safest part of the ship when the storms came, sturdy and tied down to the mast, so while everyone and everything else was thrown about, Odysseus could nap at the bottom, safe from the winds and roiling waves.
The storms tossed the ship about for a long time; the clouds were thick, and obscured the sun and stars, so Odysseus didn't know how long it was - just that they ran out of itria and he got hungry for bread.
Eventually the storm ended, like all storms at sea did, and the man and his ship pulled into a small strait between two islands, and then finally to a large, safe looking harbour. They were so eager to get out, they pulled the cage out along with them, not making Odysseus get out and walk, which was alright with him, though he was going to need to pee soon.
And then they put everything on the beach, including the cage, and told Odysseus to be quiet, so he was quiet, until he saw one of his Father's nobles walking along the line of goods, examining them, and Odysseus, being the sort to disobey when he felt it was prudent to do so, called out, "Uncle! Uncle Mentor! I really need to pee now!"
Because he really did need to pee.
There had been quite a bit of yelling, when Mentor came to his cage - yelling and pointing, such as "How dare you steal our children!" and "You would sell our own children to us?" And quite a number of staffs and spears came out, but the important thing was that Odysseus got to go and pee.
And he wasn't scolded for being away from his sheep for two nights, though he had lost seven sheep of the flock, but only two were ewes, so Father wasn't that displeased.
Odysseus was ten, the next time it happened - he knew what everything meant - the trader/slaver was unfamiliar with the islands and the weather patterns, and when the storms came, Odysseus hunkered down in his lamb-cage and didn't worry over much.
This time the coast they pulled into was Same's main harbour, after the ship was tossed about and mist had obscured the neighbouring island, so it looked like the coastline of Dulichium.
But because no one'd asked Odysseus, Odysseus didn't say anything, since this time they hadn't run out of itria.
When the men started wondering where they were, Odysseus helpfully started crying that this was unfamiliar and it wasn't home, he wanted to go home, until they gave him more itria to keep him quiet, and, convinced that they were far enough away, they made landfall.
Again, just like before, they told Odysseus to be quiet, while buyers came to look at the goods.
"Hmm, potential slaves? Let's see what we have her--"
Father had been on a tour of the territories of Ithaca, which was why when he came down to look at the goods and potential new labour, he was the one looking down at his son through the bars of the cage, staring blankly as Odysseus nibbled on his itria and getting honeyed sesame seeds all over his lap.
"Why," Laertes said, after a moment of staring at him, "are you making me buy you back, son?"
Odysseus broke off a piece of the itria, and then held it out through the bars. "The itria is good," he said.
After the yelling - mostly the others, Father didn't yell, people yelled for him - was done and the traders thoroughly convinced that taking children from here was just this side of cursed, Father said, "Just because you didn't want to herd the sheep doesn't mean you can get yourself enslaved."
Odysseus didn't really deny it, because well, he had been bored, and it had been… well it WAS fun actually.
That had been a lot of itria.
"The payment for you is going to come out of your sheep," father told him, sternly.
Which was the day Odysseus was given his very own flock of sheep in his name.
Right after this, Father and Mother went to consult the priests, who were wise in the readings of the Gods' wills and Fate in the trails of the birds and entrails of sacrifices. They'd taken a black ewe and a black kid for this.
They returned with a statement: that Odysseus would have many travels of which he would be captain of very few, especially if he left on them alone, and they would never cease even if he came of age.
In other words, apparently, this was just the beginning.
When Odysseus went on the ships with his father, or the other nobles' sons for fishing, for trade, for anything else, nothing much happened beyond the usual weather of the islands and the usual and expected amount of fish.
But over the years, if he were to venture out alone, traders had a tendency to entice him onto strange ships.
Still, Odysseus quickly realised that there were ways he could convince them to return him to Ithaca - Ithaca and its territories looked like wholly different places from different angles, and if you were not used to the storms and mists that dropped onto the lands often, it was easy to be convinced that that nice safe looking harbour was a new area altogether and a great place to offload a crying - or winsome, as befit Odysseus' mood - child.
Fortunately, Odysseus had a very deft touch with his sheep, and he could easily pay for the price of his freedom with that growing flock of sheep.
Well. eventually.
As he got older, the trips weren't quite so short anymore, some traders were more experienced, and sometimes he did end up on the nearby mainland of Dulichium, and had to get himself sold to another trader deciding to go to Same, Neritum, or Zacynthus, which would eat a significant number of his sheep when he finally got back to Ithaca. Each trade required a certain increase of profit, after all; so if he wanted to have a nice healthy large flock, he couldn't keep getting enslaved too far away.
He tried to find out more about his fate - fate was just what the Fates had laid out for all mortals, there was usually no 'what can i do to change it', no more than one could avoid death, but sometimes you could find out why.
And Odysseus was born curious; if his sister was also cursed with such a fate, it would be best to find out as soon as possible.
So he'd sacrificed a number of his sheep, lambs and rams, their fleece as blond as he could breed them, to the grotto of the nymphs in Ithaca island. The nymphs, pleased and flattered by the fleece, blonder and more golden by the generation, and closer to the colour of their beautiful hair, were able to find out and tell him that no, his sister was untouched by his fate.
It was not so much a punishment but a payment, for the deeds of his grandfather Autolycus - his mother's father had committed many grand acts of thievery in his lifetime, and drawn the ire of many across all domains and dominions, so it was Odysseus' fate to be stolen, over and over again as recompense to the world.
Well.
Now his name suddenly made sense: he was doomed to suffer all over the known world, apparently.
How annoying.
It was a very clear night when the Messenians came.
They weren't foolhardy nor overconfident; for they knew enough of the region's weather to not risk a stormy or clouded night that would obscure the stars.
They were also greedy enough not to settle for only the white sheep, nor the black sacrificial sheep for the gods; they'd seen some of Odysseus' blond sheep, glowing gold in the moonlight, and decided to snatch those too, along with their shepherds, which meant Odysseus had the somewhat mild indignity of being stuffed in a ship's hold along several of his sheep.
Seeing that it wasn't just one ship, nor just him, Odysseus had convinced the Messenians that he was far better used in the household than in the fields.
From there, he was able to persuade their basileus that he was a noble son worthy of ransom; the basileus decided that he and his shepherds were to be released back to Ithaca if Ithaca were to trade them the black and golden fleeces for the next three seasons, and leave behind ten percent of the captured sheep.
Seeing that most of that only made a little bit of a dent in his own flocks, Odysseus readily agreed. His shepherds were sent back on their ships, and Odysseus found that while officially released, he had been obliged to stay for a little while as a guest.
The basileus and his wife the basilinna had a daughter, they said, of just the right age.
And Odysseus of Ithaca was such a well-spoken young man, who knew his way around a sheep flock, surely he would be quite keen to think about the next stage of life.
Odysseus thanked them prettily and climbed out of the window that night and managed to escape out of their territory on foot.
Along the way, he encountered a handsome young man, the son of Eurytus, who, also impressed with the story of Odysseus and his adventure of daring escape post-sheep ransom, willingly swapped his bow for Odysseus' small knife, for he had plenty of other good bows back home but Odysseus had no way to hunt for food while he was on the run from potential in-laws, and pointed him in the direction of the closest port.
Unfortunately, the first ship's captain who agreed to take him to the Cephallian group of islands was a lying liar; they stopped at Pylos and sold him to great Nestor, who was the master of many horses and in need of fit young men who could handle them.
Fortunately, Odysseus proved to be utterly incapable of doing anything with horses, but because they all liked him very very much, and while he couldn't hitch them to a chariot worth a damn, they were very calm around him if he had apples and figs, Great Nestor wanted to hear his story.
For, he said, it was rare for his Gods-given horses to like someone who was so inept with handling them - such a contradiction was a sign from the Gods that he must pay attention.
So Odysseus sat at his hall, and told him the long tale of how he'd gotten taken accidentally with his sheep, and then had to escape out the window before the young lady of Messenia and her parents had realised Odysseus' very strong reluctance to marry the kidnappers of his sheep, and how he'd ended up in Pylos.
Nestor laughed till he cried, and agreed to send Odysseus back on one of his own ships, captained by one of his own sons, just so that Odysseus wouldn't risk getting sold back to Pylos again.
"Though," Nestor said, "I wouldn't mind being paid twice with your golden sheep. I heard that they are as golden as the Golden Fleece I had once seen on Colchis."
And clapped him hard on his back when Odysseus made a face at the idea of having to pay twice.
Nestor's son was as good as Nestor's word - and took him straight back to Ithaca, where his sister greeted him with cross words for being late by a week, after the return of the sheep and their shepherds and it had had fallen to her to feed his sheep and count them and make sure there was enough to buy back his freedom.
She was even more cross to hear he had had to buy himself back again, from Nestor of Pylos, and his son was waiting in the docks for the payment.
But Nestor's son was impressed with the blond-ness of their sheep, and promised to tell his father that they would consider trading for the wool in the next few seasons, especially if Odysseus was able to make them even more golden.
"Honestly," Mother said, later, when Odysseus finally got to go back to the palace, "Nestor had no right to demand such a high payment for your freedom, once he realised whose son you were."
"Nestor has always been more cunning than he looks," Laertes said, looking down and considering the various value of goods that Nestor had paid for Odysseus, and then the payment that Odysseus had paid out of his own flocks to Nestor's son.
It came to quite a tidy profit for the lord of Pylos, in reality.
"It does mean I can visit him a lot, because now I am not in any sort of debt to him," Odysseus pointed out, "and his sons are quite nice."
"He has too many sons," Laertes said, but conceded the point that Nestor of Pylos was a good ally to have.
And besides, it had been Father's own fault for not visiting Pylos a little more often to maintain those Argonaut ties.
Odysseus learned, over yet more years, how to tell when other people were lying liars - he wasn't the only one who could convincingly promise that the south side of Ithaca wasn't the same island as the west-side; it would be the height of hubris to believe that he was the only person who could lie his ass off.
Identifying lying ship captains was critical for his own growth and development; learning how to nudge them to get him closer back to home - or his own intended destination was unfortunately useful.
Though it had pros and cons, honestly - he did not have to pay to outfit his own ships - he could use his Fate, and walk out to an isolated part of a beach, and get kidnapped towards where he wanted to go.
For the most part, he was almost always able to keep the beautiful yellow - in some lights, they were almost golden, honestly - woven chitons and chlamys around him - even if a slaver decided to strip him of the clothing, he could direct his new owner to take note of the golden chlamys, or the golden chiton, and since he could tell them all about the origin of that wool, and its lack of dyes - and thus its natural, easy beauty - he got to see first hand the growth of his golden sheep wool market in the surrounding region and beyond.
It did mean he had to pay for his freedom in the form of those sheep - either the fleece, raw wool, or finished products, but all in all, it seemed like the accounts worked out; after all, if any men fell overboard in the taking of Odysseus to, say, Sparta, it wasn't his men who fell overboard.
The time came, after many many trips all over the Ionian Sea, parts of the Adriatic and some of the Cretan sea, of the news of Basileus Tyndareus' daughter being ready to marry.
Odysseus knew there was very little chance that he would manage to get the daughter of Zeus' hand, not when he had only just persuaded the lord of Las that he was the owner of the sheep that was the source of the gold chiton on his back. However, since he was already in Sparta's major territory, it was only a little more effort to persuade the Lassian lord to pack Odysseus up along with his son to take a visit in Sparta proper, since said son was already going to go anyway.
So Odysseus was one of the first suitors to arrive in Sparta, even if he was from fairly far away with unfavourable tides and winds this time of the year, and bore no gifts at all, other than yet more debt to the lord of Las.
(It was not very big debt, the man had accepted a payment of five bolts of wool, and Odysseus would have been insulted except it would have been a long way to return to Ithaca, accounting for inflation along yet more legs of the journey OR having to pay Nestor at Pylos. Nestor wouldn't have accepted mere five bolts, he would have asked for ten, but Odysseus would have gotten a non-stop journey back home.)
In Sparta, Odysseus met Nestor and one of his many sons (so it was a good thing he had decided not to head back home via Pylos first, because then he would have probably missed Nestor), and the set of four horses that they had brought for the wooing. They remembered Odysseus and tried chasing him for apples he didn't have, and Iphitos was no help at all, refusing to let Odysseus onto his specially made chariot that accommodated his leg and crutch, to get him across the field faster and away from Nestor's greedy horses.
So Odysseus had to jump a few fences, and keep running for the nearest trees and walls.
Some of the trees were a little younger than they looked at first glance, especially the ones inside the wall, so the branches broke under his weight and dumped him and three dozen barely ripe figs at the feet of a surprised young lady.
"This is not how you harvest figs," she said after a moment.
"This is how you harvest figs while running away from horses," Odysseus said, and she probably would have called his assertion into question - it was ludicrous, he agreed - except Nestor's horses whinnyed right behind the wall, and she smirked. A little.
"You're running away from horses," she said, as Odysseus pulled his chlamys off and started scooping all the figs he could reach into it.
"Yes," he said.
"You, a suitor for my cou- the daughter of Tyndareus' hand, running away from horses."
"I am absolutely bad with horses," Odysseus said, "And will have zero chance with your cousin." He grinned at her little start, but then he'd caught her slip, and she had guessed he was a suitor, so that was both equal deductions right there. "But I can outrun distracted horses. Care to watch?"
The young lady's smile quirked wider, her grey eyes dancing.
"Sure," she said, "I'll show you out of the yard."
Turned out that the daughter of Icarius (for she had to be, if she was a cousin to the daughter of Tyndareus) found it very entertaining to watch him out-run horses by throwing figs at them.
And she liked people who ran.
Fortunately, Odysseus liked running a lot. (it was why he never got caught by any roving gangs of terrestrial slavers. You couldn't run very far on a ship.)
Odysseus wouldn't say it was the best basis for a courtship, but, there was a pile of unripe figs in his guest room later that night, so it seemed like she didn't think it was the worst.
